


Catch

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Series: hold you on the way down [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Animal Planet, Depression, Gen, Sad Bucky in Snow, Tamagotchi, house arrest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 23:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1665860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He leaves the TV tuned to the lady with the sloths. An hour later, someone is talking to dogs the same way. He likes it when Steve talks to him, but the TV can do all the work for both of them. The dogs are better at it than Bucky is, anyway. They wag their tails.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catch

**Author's Note:**

> verity wrote "boomerang" and then I entirely missed the point of that story and wrote the companion story where everything is all about Bucky.
> 
> Thanks to verity for sharing and to iuliamentis and rubynye for audiencing! <3

Even when he was being kept in a very small, very white room, Steve tried to give him choices. Now that Bucky is being kept in the more spacious and visually complex confines of Steve's apartment, Steve does nothing but give him choices: whether to answer or not when Steve speaks, where to sit, what to eat. Now Steve wants him to choose what to watch on television.

Bucky takes the remote control from him and obediently changes the channels. He stops when he hears a voice that reminds him of Steve's. The person speaking doesn't sound like Steve at all--different gender, different accent, different diction--but there is something in her intonations that reminds Bucky of the way Steve speaks to him. He notes that she is talking to a three-toed sloth a minute or two before he realizes that what reminds him of Steve is the way she speaks affectionately and cheerfully with no expectation of being answered.

When Steve gives him the choice of whether or not to answer him, Bucky mostly chooses silence. 

He leaves the TV tuned to the lady with the sloths. An hour later, someone is talking to dogs the same way. He likes it when Steve talks to him, but the TV can do all the work for both of them. The dogs are better at it than Bucky is, anyway. They wag their tails.

* * *

He tries to wag his tail for Steve sometimes. He answers Steve when he talks. He tells Steve things that he remembers from before, memories with Steve in them. They don't come to him often--the others, his missions, come more readily, the events and images packaged neatly by his own voice delivering a mission report--but things surface from time to time. He tells Steve about a fistfight in an alleyway, about exploring a park that seemed to go on forever, about working on a car while Steve sat nearby, watching. Steve is always there in his memories of that time. Steve is always watching. 

He tries shaving, which Steve definitely seems to like, looking at him with even greater intensity than usual. Steve touches the smooth skin of Bucky's cheek and his gaze lingers on Bucky's mouth. Bucky thinks something is about to happen, but he's not sure what. Steve jerks away, blushing a little, and says, "Natasha will like that, you've actually got a face under there."

Bucky didn't do it for Natasha, though. He doesn't let her get a good look at his face the next time she comes to the apartment. 

He doesn't know what to make of that moment when something almost happened, but he doesn't want Steve to pull away from him like that again. He doesn't shave for a while after that.

* * *

People come over sometimes. Steve always warns him before they do, and Bucky retreats to a defensible vantage point, the armchair in the corner by the record player. It is, he recalls, not defensible if a sniper has found just the right position on the roof across the street, but sitting in the chair means he can also watch that spot. He'll know if a sniper has moved into position. So far he hasn't seen one. 

If he did, he couldn't chase them across the rooftops the way Steve once chased him. Trackers implanted in his bones (three different places, but they left eleven puncture marks, so he doesn't know for sure which three) and in his metal arm will detect his movements if he leaves the bounds of Steve's apartment, and he will be neutralized. He assumes that's what the other eight injection sites were for, but he hasn't bothered to ask Steve for details. He doesn't want to spoil the element of surprise.

In the meantime, he stays indoors, sitting in his chosen spot, when people come to visit Steve. Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, comes most often, and Bucky never lets her see him watching her movements. If she reveals herself as a threat he will deal with her. Sam Wilson comes just once, and concerns Bucky even less; without the element of flight Wilson would not take long to remove at all. Tony Stark comes a few times, constantly chattering. Bucky isn't sure of his ground, there. Stark has access to armor and advanced weaponry. Stark, Bucky thinks, according to some heuristic much older than the Winter Soldier's training, will not hesitate to _cheat_. Bucky can't stop monitoring Stark when he's present, constantly trying to assess him as a threat and never coming to a definite conclusion. Bucky doesn't like it when Stark is there.

It's easiest to be alone with Steve. He's known Steve a long time--all he knows of his own ancient history is the flashes he sees of it in his memories of Steve. Steve talks to him in the same way that people on television talk to dogs. Bucky doesn't have to make threat assessments when he's alone with Steve. If Steve becomes a threat, Bucky already knows he won't fight back. No plan is required.

* * *

Steve goes away from time to time. Usually he goes to New York. He tells Bucky when he's going, reminds him that someone will be monitoring him by his trackers, reminds him that he can call. Bucky makes the effort, at such times, to show that he understands. He has learned to say, "Good luck." It makes Steve smile. Steve hugs him and Bucky hugs back. Steve pulls away only slowly from the hug. Nothing is about to happen.

Steve is gone for three days, and Bucky plays a single DVR'd episode of _Pit Bulls and Parolees_ thirty-two times. Someday he's going to bite Steve, he thinks, and then he'll know what the words are behind that censored beep.

* * *

His memories are beginning to pile up, but they don't connect to each other in the way he thinks they should. The memories of killing leak into the memories of Steve, like blood spilled into a bottle of milk, tainting everything. The fistfight in the alley only ends when Steve's face is pulped beyond recognition and Steve falls away. They are scouting a mission in the park, and Bucky knows that when he has taken out the target he will leave Steve's lifeless body beside it, tidying up loose ends. Bucky is working on a car while Steve watches, until he feels the cold metal at the nape of his neck, and knows that Steve was waiting all along for the best moment to attack. Steve is laughing in the sun while the restraints seal over Bucky's arms, and he knows he won't know anymore after what comes next.

He starts to lose track of things. He sleeps and wakes at odd hours, unrelated to the light outside. It has been one hundred eleven days since he entered Steve's apartment. He knows this because he checks the calendar that Steve keeps in the kitchen; the number means nothing to him. 

He sits in front of the TV, or in the chair in the corner, and hours pass without him noticing. He tries to assure himself that he would have reacted instantly if any threat appeared. He would have, as surely as he would have bled if he were cut or fallen to the ground if the chair had disappeared, but he doesn't _remember_. 

He is supposed to be gaining more memories, not losing them. He is not getting better.

* * *

He wakes up and Steve is crouching beside his bed. Steve's face is wet. Bucky lies still, waiting for what Steve is going to do. In his dream Steve was holding him over the edge of the snowy mountain, and Bucky knew that Steve's hand was going to open, and he would fall and fall forever. In his dream he had been frightened. He didn't want Steve to let him fall. Now he's awake and he feels nothing at all, but he knows that it's still only Steve's grip that holds him here.

"I'm sorry," Steve says softly. "Bucky, I'm so sorry."

Bucky shakes his head. He says the only words he can remember to say to Steve, because he does not want to scream Steve's name the way he did in the dream. "Good luck."

* * *

Steve goes away while Bucky is watching _Dirty Jobs_. When Steve comes back it's _Mountain Monsters_ , but Bucky doesn't remember where Mike went or what they're hunting. Steve picks up the remote and turns the TV off without asking Bucky's permission, and Bucky knows. 

Steve sits down next to him. Bucky doesn't pull away, doesn't even bring his arms up to defend himself. Steve isn't crying anymore, but he looks like he looked beside Bucky's bed. 

Bucky remembers him looking sad and tired a long time ago in New York. He thinks, _this is the end of the line_.

"Bucky," Steve says. "You're not getting better, are you? You're not--you're not all right."

Bucky shakes his head obediently. He understands. Steve has the voice the humans have when the dog can't be made safe enough to ever leave the shelter. 

"You need help," Steve says, and he sets down a stapled sheaf of white paper between them. Bucky looks down at it. The top sheet gives a doctor's name and credentials.

"You're going to get help," Steve goes on. "You can choose which doctor we'll try first. We'll get someone who can come here to work with you. If they recommend something else, or if we can't find anyone who can come here, then we'll try another plan. But you're going to get the help you need."

 _Good luck_ , Bucky mouths, but he doesn't know if he's talking to Steve or himself. 

"You're not letting me go," Bucky says. He can feel the abyss under him, can feel Steve's hands holding on. He can feel the train rushing forward, the howl of the wind around him. He wonders if maybe somewhere up ahead, if Steve holds on to him just long enough, there might be a safe place to land. 

Steve's hand reaches out, but he doesn't touch the scruff of Bucky's beard. He brushes Bucky's hair away from his eyes, tucks it behind his ear. When his hand pulls away it goes slowly. 

"I'm not letting you go," Steve agrees. He doesn't ask Bucky to make a choice about that, either.

* * *

The therapist Bucky judges easiest to kill from her CV agrees to come into the apartment to work with him. Natasha comes over to explain how security will work during the doctor's visits. Steve and Natasha will both be in the apartment, but Bucky will be alone in his bedroom with the doctor.

Bucky's gaze flicks to the TV. It's off right now, but it usually fills in the silence while he doesn't talk to Steve.

"Oh, yeah, I almost forgot," Natasha says, and she slides a bright pink plastic thing, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, across the table to Bucky. He picks it up, already knowing it will not be useful as a weapon. There are no sharp knives in Steve's kitchen, only safety razors in the bathroom, and the mirrors and windows do not break. 

"It's a Tamagotchi," Natasha says. "A little pet to keep you company when you have to be away from Animal Planet."

Bucky presses the buttons and an egg appears while Natasha explains, "You have to feed it and train it to be a good little alien or it'll die."

He looks up from the egg to Steve and Natasha, both watching him. When he looks down at the little screen again, the egg is shaking, about to hatch. He thinks of all the kind voices on the television, talking to sick and hurt and vicious dogs, talking to injured cats and orphaned sloths. They all sound like Steve, talking to him. 

He frowns at the little creature as it pops out of its shell and tries out his own voice. "I can do that."


End file.
